Pages and pages of beautiful words have been written about Bob this past week.

I think he would have thoroughly approved of the effort and energy spent by people like Guy Rundle, David Marr and Mike Rann – among others – on finding just the right phrase to capture the genius of Ellis.

The long run-on sentence, sluggishly setting out towards its subject like a sleeper train through a country station late at night; semicolons spacing out the melancholy burden of change and decay; sub-clauses like skiffs beating back the current on a slow-flowing river, before enlivened, alarmed, enraged, the languid water surges and – leaping over the falls – ends.

Or perhaps you disagree?

Because with Bob, there was always the hook.

The psychological snare he’d planted three paragraphs up the page.

And just as you strode through the scrub, convinced you had his argument safely in hand, the Ellis rope drew tight around your ankle and turned your world upside down.

As supple and smooth as his prose could be — there was always a hard edge of thoughtfulness.